A major concern of cellular phone users and cellular phone manufacturers is the limited battery life of conventional cellular phones. As cellular phones are manufactured with increasingly smaller form factors, their available space for a battery is also diminished. Meanwhile, conventional cellular phones and especially smart phones are also increasing their power requirements that may result in even further reductions of battery life. Such considerations for battery life are especially critical when the cell phone is away from a charging station (e.g., a user of a cell phone is on the move, at a restaurant, shopping mall, sporting event, etc.) or under certain special situations (e.g., emergency calls are required, the cell phone has a partially charged battery and will quickly drain the battery, etc.).
There have been several attempts to increase battery life. Such conventional solutions include multiple Media Access Control (MAC) states including a sleep mode, the use of an uplink control (a major cause of power draining may be due to power amplification needed for uplink transmission) to reduce power usage by reducing the need for high power transmission when the cellular device is close to a cell tower, and lastly, the desired power savings may be achieved by reducing the number of applications that may tax battery life. For example, to conserve battery life, WiFi, Bluetooth, GPS, and sync controls may be shut down. In addition, screen brightness may also be reduced or dimmed. A display screen may also be turned off when a “timeout” condition has been reached.